As many of you no doubt realize, leaving China at this time has been a bitter-sweet experience for me. So many beautiful people, friends, colleagues and students who have wished me well. Some good-byes have been harder than others and some very hard indeed. There have been cards, flowers gifts and blessings. If truth be told I didn’t really really want to leave. But needs must. It is time to pack up, distribute belongings to those who are staying or to new arrivals and declutter our stuff ready for shipping. It has been a busy time but arranging for the extra two weeks in Shanghai after school finished has helped. We have been able to do all our chores in a leisurely manner interspersed with final coffees, drinks and dinners with friends.

One of the things that school helps us with is getting a criminal background check from the police. This is necessary for teachers taking up a new position in another country but as I am retiring I didn’t give it much thought but as I turn my attention towards my new Taiji venture, it occurred to me that having the document might be beneficial if I ever wanted to work in care homes doing seated Taiji sessions for the elderly. It would mean that there would be no gaps in any DBS checks. So with one week to departure we visited the Bureau of Entry & Exit to begin the process.

All went smoothly at first and I returned after 4 days to collect my certificate which being all in Mandarin needed to be translated. This is a service which you can pay for so I found the desk and showed my passport along with the certificate. I completed a receipt, paid the 16 pounds and stuffed all my various bits of paper back into the plastic wallet that I have used to keep everything together. Being A4 it didn’t fit too well in my backpack so I folded it in half (as usual) and stuffed it in. Now, we can only assume that at that point the passport fell out, although neither of us saw or heard or felt it at the time. By the time we reached home the passport was not there. It was however, 24 hours later when I actually noticed that it was missing, after I had collected my English translation.

After a somewhat panicky search of our apartment, my bag and all the places that we normally keep such important documents we hightailed it back to the police station in the vain hope that the passport had been found and handed in. It hadn’t. The lady on Customer Service was a bit officious and didnt actually look, or ask anyone else if a passport had been handed in. She just said no and moved on to the next person. So that was that.

Then the real panic began to set in. I was directed to another window where I filled in a ‘Lost Passport’ form and was asked to come and collect the receipt on Monday, 2 hours before I was due to depart for the airport. “You will not be flying then” I was told. So with a heavy heart we returned home to begin the process of rescheduling my flight. This is quite an expensive process so we decided that Kevin should fly as planned and I stay here to get not only an Emergency Passport but also an Exit Visa which would allow me to leave China. The problem was that the Exit Visa would take up to 7 working days to produce and that I couldn’t even apply for it without the Emergency Passport.

Our original plan had been to fly home, unpack etc, then on 13th for me to take an EasyJet flight to Geneva to join Shifu and Leping for my first European Taiji Workshop. Now it looked as though I would only have time to fly to Geneva and given the 7 working day rule, even that was tight! Slightly more panicking as there were only 2 Finn Air flights per week that didn’t stop everywhere and take 30+ hours for my trip.

I contacted School to appraise them of the situation and they were great. HR said that they would put together supporting documentation for my Exit Visa and Operations agreed that I could stay in the apartment, until 8th July. A friend from my Taiji class works in a bank so doesn’t have school holidays. She has very kindly offered to put me up for the last few nights. What a godsend!

It was Friday evening and we spent the time filling in an electronic form which would cancel my passport and start the process of obtaining an emergency travel document to allow me to leave China. You can make a return journey and then hand in your temporary document on arrival then apply for a proper passport. As part of the process you have to list the countries you will be visiting on your return. So I said China, Switzerland and then UK. I paid 100 pounds and an hour later I was informed by email that the document had been approved and I could book an appointment at the Shanghai Consulate to collect it. The earliest available slot was on Tueday lunchtime. God Bless the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for their prompt response (they were obviously working as it was their Friday afternoon). We went to bed feeling a little easier.

At 3:30 am Kevin work up realizing that in the list of countries on the application, we hadn’t inclued Finland. I was booked on FinnAir with a transit in Helsinki. Yikes! Maybe they wouldn’t let me even board a plane at Shanghai to somewhere that I hadn’t declared on the form! Double Yikes!! More panic. Kevin spent the wee small hours surfing the internet trying find out. When I got up at 6am we decided to bite the bullet and apply again, this time with all the correct countries listed. Another 100 pounds but we felt better. This time, as it was Saturday there was no prompt response from the FCO and we realized that everyone in the UK was probably at home enjoying the tennis or football.

We continued with our packing and sorting (with still no sign of the elusive passport in the apartment) because the shipping people were coming on Sunday to take ALL our stuff. I should point out at this juncture that all this was taking place against a back drop of very intense, heavy rain. It is the Shanghai rainy season and by that I mean it was very, very wet. Borderline floody. It had been raining like that consistantly for over 3 weeks. It was also humid so nothing was dry and it did nothing for our mood.

In the midst of all this Kevin received an email which sent the stress levels even higher. His flight with Finn Air, scheduled for the Monday evening had been cancelled. He needed to rebook (fortunately at their expense) and they were suggesting a SAS flight which departed 2 hours after the one he was supposed to be on. The problem? This was the second time Finn Air had done this. Last time he was bumped to a Lufthansa flight and they charged three times the price of Finn Air for the extra bags (so he hadn’t taken them!) This time we would have no choice but to pay the exorbitant rates if SAS did the same thing. The good deal on the extra bags was one of the reasons that we had chosen Finn Air when booking all those many months ago.

Anyway, after an online chat with their Customer service rep, he was able to rebook for the following Monday. This was perfect because it meant that he could be with me to sort out all the red tape and bureaucracy and to keep me company for the first of the extra weeks.

Later that afternoon, when I was grocery shopping I received a phone call. I do get scam calls consisting of streams of Mandarin obviously trying to sell me something (I have no idea what) but on this occasion, my screen said Madrid, Spain. I do have a Spanish friend here, Javi who we were due to meet up with for dinner that evening. My first thought was that someone was trying to reach him and had somehow got my number. So I answered. A voice asked if it was Lisa Toner and then informed me that they were dealing with my emergency document request (2nd one). I can only assume that the FCO have teams around the word who share the weekend jobs of dealing with idiots like me who don’t really know what they are doing with the online forms. Anyway, standing beside the deli counter I got the wonderful news that I didn’t in fact need the second document as I could transit anywhere on the emergency passport, as long as I didn’t go to the same place twice. I promised not to. She said that they would refund the second payment so I was not only relieved but very happy that the FCO were doing the decent thing. God Bless them. I was very proud to be British at that point. We could enjoy the farewell dinner with our Taiji friends as some of the stress had been lifted.

Monday afternoon saw us back at the Beaureau of Entry & Exit to collect my lost passport receipt. I was advised to bring it back with my emergency passport AND a passport photo. This we did not have, remember our shipping had gone the day before and any spare copies of my ID photo were packed deeply in boxes. We did, however know where to get a copy so first thing Tuesday morning we cycled to the Photomi shop that we had used to get our ID for the Thai visa 4 months previously. Fortunately Kevin remembered where it was (!). We were there before the booth opened so being British I waited patiently outside while the guy woke up his computer etc only to have a Chinese family barge straight past me and up to the counter to be served first! No concept of a queue! I will be glad to get back to proper queuing I can tell you! Eventually we got copies of the photos and sped off to school where I met with HR who gave my supporting documentation and a helpful list of what I needed to do at the police station.

Then it was time to jump into a Didi for the drive across Shanghai to the British Consulate. We were dropped outside the address that I had been given but there were NO SIGNS. We walked all the way around the building to no avail. Even when we went inside there was a controlled gate to the elevators and a reception desk, again unmarked. I wonder now if it is a deliberate diplomatic thing to hide your location. Fortunately at the Reception desk the lady had a sheet with my name on and I was escorted to the lifts. On the 17th Floor the doors opened to a security guard with a bag scanning machine. He asked if I had an appointment then told me to wait. We did. We hung around in front of the elevator doors while he went to fetch a receptionist who came trotting out to us. We could see the Union Jacks and ‘British Centre’ to our left but we not allowed in. Very strange. The receptionist took my name, trotted back to her desk and phoned someone. A few minutes later a member of staff appeared with my emergency passport and reassurances that I could use it to transit in Helsinki.

If you have never seen one before, and I hadn’t, the Emergency Travel Document is a rather fetching shade of blue which is a great improvement on the standard red that we all carry. I shall be quite sorry to have to relinquish it at Manchester.

Next it was back to the now very familiar destination of the Bureau of Entry & Exit to hand everything in and to start the Exit Visa process. Here they didn’t actually need the photo that we had dashed to get that morning. Instead they sat me in a photo booth and snapped a head shot which then printed out onto the correct form. Fortunately someone was there to help with all that. Finally I came face to face with a very nice young policewoman who spoke excellent English. She looked at all my papers and pronounced that I would be better off replacing my residence visa. I told her that I was retiring and leaving China and to my surprise this caused some consternation! Apparently the school had not included a ‘release’ letter. I was getting a little bit fed up by this point.

In amongst my papers I had an ‘Employment Verification’ letter from my original visit to get the criminal background check. After some more back and forth with her superiors I was told that if I wrote a statement saying that I was retiring and definately not coming back to China and would never again apply for a residence permit, then they would give me the Exit Visa. So that is what I did. They don’t make it easy do they! The Emergency passport complete with Exit Visa will be ready for me to collect on Tuesday which is within the time for me to catch my flight out on the Friday evening. That is, if FinnAir don’t cancel it!

We have the rest of this week in our (empty) apartment. Pretty much all of our friends and acquaintances have departed so there is no one left to see or hang out with. Time for a rest I think. The rain has stopped and the ‘stupidly hot’ season has started.

As you can see not only is it hot but the humidity is curently about 70% which means that it ‘feels like’ 40 degrees. Its the sort of heat that saps your strength and it’s going to last unti I leave.

Now that the panic is over, I have had time to write this blog. I have been reflecting that part of being an intrepid traveller is taking the rough with the smooth. Things don’t always go according to plan (even the best laid ones!) You need to be flexible and be prepared to change, amend and adapt. Hopefully any readers who are also travellers will be reassured to know, that even when a crisis happens, the government will be there for you and will help. The process to replace a lost passport is actually very quick. And I know that not all countries then require an Exit Visa.

Now i want to share some of the wonderful memories of the beautiful people that i have lived and worked with over the past 5 years. I am very sad to say good bye and some good-byes were harder than others. We have been blessed to know so many good people here. They have all enriched our lives.